The present invention relates generally to an improvement for stoves, and more particularly for commercial topside cookers.
Many fast food operations, and particularly restaurants whose primary menu items are hamburgers and the like, use stoves (sometimes referred to as cookers) that cook from both the top side as well as the bottom side of the food item. In these applications, a stove will have a bottom side cooking element which may be a grill covering charcoal or other heat dispersing material. If Charcoal is used as the heat disbursing material, it also serves to catch drippings and create a smoked flavor in the food item. This bottom side cooking element can have its heat generated either from gas or electrical units beneath the grill.
The top side heating element is generally an Aluminum casting or other similar structure carrying one or more heating elements for generating heat therein. To transfer the heat evenly over the grill surface, a heat transfer unit is attached to the top side heating element. The heat transfer unit, commonly referred to as a platen shoe, is made of a material with high conductivity. Generally, the platen shoe in these type applications is made of aluminum which, while having a desirable property of being a highly conductive material, and therefore transmitting the heat evenly over the grill surface on the top of the food item, unfortunately has the undesirable characteristic of being somewhat malleable and therefore can tend to deform in response to both pressure and heat.
In order to get the best possible cooking results from the top side heating element of stoves of this type, it is important that the platen shoe remain absolutely flat. In the past, in order to draw the platen shoe to the top side heating element, counterbored screw holes have been cut through the platen shoe and through the top side heating element and bolts were passed through both of those units with a nut on the end of the bolt securely affixing the platen shoe to the top side heating element. This construction did serve to keep the platen shoe firmly connected to the top side heating element.
Unfortunately this prior arrangements had several drawbacks. Specifically, in cleaning the top side heating element, it was necessary to disassemble the unit in order to get the grease and other accumulated materials from the cooking activities cleaned from the unit. In addition, improvements were made in the platen shoe by coating the cooking surface of the platen shoe with a non-stick material such as the trademark material produced by DuPont De Nemours & Co. under the trademark TEFLON.RTM.. This TEFLON.RTM. coating on the surface of the platen shoe prevented the food item from sticking to the platen shoe and therefore permitted the cooking process to run more smoothly. While the TEFLON.RTM. coating to the cooking surface of the platen shoe improved the cooking process, it created further problems during the cleaning process. When the platen shoe was cleaned, particularly when a spatula or other scrubbing device was used to clean its cooking surface, there was a tendency to chip away the TEFLON.RTM. coating around the opening where the bolts passed through the platen shoe.
Those skilled in the art will appreciate that the platen shoe is too thin to use a conventional threaded fastener system with a blind threaded hole in the back of the platen shoe and still meet strength requirements.
In order to solve the problem of the TEFLON.RTM. on the platen shoe being scraped from the cooking surface during the cleaning process, some manufacturers of these products have resorted to welding the bolts that pass through the top side heating element to the back side of the platen shoe. This construction allowed a smooth coating of TEFLON.RTM. to be placed over the entire cooking surface of the platen shoe. This improvement solved the problem of scraping the TEFLON.RTM. from the cooking surface of the platen shoe caused by the discontinuous nature of the coating around the bolt holes passing through the platen shoe.
While the construction of the platen shoe with threaded studs welded to the back of the unit addressed the problem of bolts passing through the platen shoe and creating a likelihood of marring the TEFLON.RTM. surface on the cooking side of the unit, the solution also created further problems. If a nut were torqued too tightly, the welded stud would shear from the back side of the platen shoe or the threads on the end of the stud would strip. When this happened, because all of the bolts designed to attach the platen shoe to the top side heating element must be engaged and pulled down tightly to get adequate heat transfer between the top side heating element and the platen shoe, and to keep the surface of the platen shoe absolutely flat, a sheered stud would make the platen shoe unusable. In this circumstance, the platen shoe would have to be shipped back to the manufacturer to have the stud rewelded, a costly process which was time consuming and inefficient.
Furthermore, the platen shoes with the threaded studs welded to the back side thereof created a shipping problem because the studs protruded from the back side of the platen shoes and therefore prevented the platen shoes from being stacked in flat mating relationship when multiple units were shipped to the cooker manufacturers or users. Studs would tend to get bent during shipping, and even if they did not suffer any damage during shipping, this construction raised packing material and shipping cost.
In considering the dilemmas of the prior art, we have concluded that what is needed, and is therefore an object of our invention, is a platen shoe, the cooking side of which is absolutely flat and TEFLON.RTM. coated, to get the maximum heat transfer and even cooking that is desired as well as to prevent sticking of the food item being cooked on the top side by the platen shoe and which is easily cleanable, even with the use of spatulas, without marring the TEFLON.RTM. surface.
What is further needed, and is therefore an object of this invention, is to have such a platen shoe which is connected to the top side heating element by bolts which, if sheared during the tightening process as a result of over-torquing, can be easily and readily replaced without having to be shipped to the factory.
It is also an object of our invention to provide a platen shoe made of aluminum which can have steel studs attached to the back side thereof for connecting the platen shoe to the top side heating element. Steel studs are much stronger than aluminum studs which had to be used in the prior art devices in order to weld the studs to the platen shoe.
What is also needed, and is therefore a further object of our invention, is a platen shoe which has a connecting device between the platen shoe and the top side heating element which will allow the platen shoe to be shipped in a flat nesting relationship without the necessity of studs protruding from the back side thereof.